


Sweater Weather

by ladyeternal



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Aran Sweaters, Inside jokes, M/M, This is for dance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Valentine’s Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22726288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeternal/pseuds/ladyeternal
Summary: Tony Stark & Billy Cooper spend Valentine’s Day together.  That’s it; that’s the fic.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Billy Cooper
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Sweater Weather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dance_the_code](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_the_code/gifts).



> I don’t own any of the characters. This pairing is a bit of an inside joke between me and dance_the_code, and this fic is for her. Happy Valentine’s Day, my love. You will always be my person.
> 
> This does not take place in any current continuity for either fandom. It exists entirely in an RP AU of mine & dance’s creation and would take a really long time to explain, so please know that anything confusing is entirely our fault.

~ooooOOOoooo~

“It’s not going to be enough.” It was a little late to be complaining; after all, his beloved was due any minute and there was no changing anything about the evening now. The table was set, as was the den with the giant television. Lobster fettuccini with a leek-tarragon cream sauce, fresh-baked bread, sparkling water with hibiscus flowers floating in the flutes. Dessert would be crepes with honey, walnut and rose, followed by a selection of classic movies to choose from that, for once, weren’t science fiction that Tony could spend the entire time gleefully tearing apart with science realism or getting intriguing new ideas from.

None of which was Tony’s actual problem. He’d had plenty of practice impressing romantic companions that meant far less to him, and Valentine’s Day itself didn’t intimidate him. There had been too many misunderstandings in the beginning of this unorthodox courtship that had required them to hammer out their communication skills and learn how to listen to each other, to understand the non-verbal signals they both had a habit of giving off and know how to spot the signs of an incipient trauma-related stress episode.

No, the problem was the gift.

“Would you like me to display the transcripts of your many, many meetings on that subject, sir?” J.A.R.V.I.S.’ neutral voice was, somehow, more deadpan than Tony had been able to manage on his most sarcastic days.

“No, I don’t, thank you.” Tony let a touch of irritation trickle into his voice before sighing and scrubbing his hands over his face. “I should’ve gotten him something better. Or at least gotten him more than _one_. I’m a billionaire, J; it’s not like I have to worry about setting the bar too high for myself.”

J.A.R.V.I.S.’ only answer was to play a snippet from Tony’s conversation with Pepper on the subject, who had very reasonably pointed out that his beloved was neither materialistic nor used to the over-the-top gestures that Tony had bestowed on other lovers in the past… gestures which, she’d also pointed out, had been so extravagant because they’d been substitutes for the kind of intimacy Tony hadn’t been emotionally ready for at the time.

Tony’s response was to flip off his beloved A.I. and pace until he heard the door open and his name being called out.

There was nothing feigned about the eagerness with which Tony jogged to greet Cooper as he was closing the door behind him, a duffel bag over one shoulder and a wrapped box under one arm. “Hey, gorgeous,” he breathed, reaching up to cup that freckled jaw in both hands and draw his lover’s face down for a warm greeting kiss.

“Hullo yourself.” Cooper smiled as the kiss ended, letting Tony relieve him of the duffel. “I’m not late, am I?”

“Your timing is perfect, as always.” It was an effort to walk normally as Tony took Cooper’s duffel to his bedroom while Cooper took the chance to set his gift on a table and get washed up. “So tell me all about the ne’er-do-well that you had to hunt down before you could come.”

“Nothing too exciting there,” Cooper told him. He appeared behind Tony in the living room, wrapping his arms around the shorter man as Tony instantly turned towards him to slip his own around Cooper’s neck. “Just a Madoff-wannabe that thought he was too smart to get caught a second time.”

“Poor bastard,” Tony murmured through a smirk. “Didn’t he know that nobody’s smarter than my gorgeous?”

“There are many, many people smarter than me,” Cooper protested, his tone gentled by a teasing lilt in response to Tony’s flirtation. “Yourself being at the top of that list.”

“Bullshit,” Tony retorted. “If that was true, I wouldn’t love you nearly as much as I do.”

That got him a much, much bigger smile and his first proper kiss of the evening.

* * *

Dinner went beautifully. Tony had expected it would, between Cooper’s genuinely curious palate and the best epicurean talent money could buy preparing the meal. Not that Tony couldn’t or didn’t shift for himself when he had to, but their first proper Valentine’s Day together wasn’t something he’d wanted to take a chance on.

Settled into the den, Tony was about to ask whether Cooper wanted to start with Casablanca or Bringing Up Baby when he turned to see his F.B.I. agent walking in with that wrapped box in his hands. “Babe?”

“I thought,” William said carefully, “we’d open presents before the movie? If that’s okay? That way we don’t forget… in case we get distracted.”

Tony tried not to look like he’d been caught off-guard. After all, he’d almost been hoping for that very thing. But there was little that Tony could bring himself to deny Cooper after two years together: the first with Tony being very interested and Cooper missing the signals entirely, and the second going on a series of the lowest-key dates Tony Stark had ever experienced whenever Cooper could catch enough time between fugitive hunts to meet up with Tony in either Malibu or New York.

He’d never expected to fall so madly in love with a federal agent, especially one that most would shrug off as a government-funded bounty hunter. But Cooper was more than that: for all the tough-as-nails exterior he showed the world, he had the soul of a builder, careful and steady and patient, able to tell the difference between the imperfections that gave something character and those that needed to be carefully sanded away.

It was a love Tony had never expected to find, and one that he would never regret, even if it fell apart in his hands like every other relationship he’d ever had with flesh-and-blood beings.

So Tony hid his deep breath behind fetching his present for Cooper: a simple white box tied with hot-rod red and gold ribbons; and carried it to the couch where Cooper sat waiting for him. After a moment’s awkwardness, they exchanged boxes, and Cooper beat him to the “open yours first” only by virtue of the laugh that Tony let out at the silliness of their lack of coordination.

Feeling a little self-conscious about just tearing into the paper like a child at Christmas, Tony opened the neatly-taped ends and worked the box free of the paper, then carefully opened the flap.

Inside was a pair of bracelet-style cuffs, wrought in what looked like gold, each fashioned into the traditional claddagh symbol. The gesture was so surprising that it shocked Tony into stillness, his fingers twitching for a moment before tracing the carefully-cast lines and drawing one out.

His eyes widened when the ends of the cuff registered. Rather than just the careful rounded edge of a normal bracelet, there were sensors encased in gold-tinged polycarbonate. Sensors he recognized.

There was no way he wouldn’t have. He’d created them after all.

“J.A.R.V.I.S. helped with the design and fabrication,” Cooper confessed, somewhat nervously. “They’re coded to pair with the current Mach suits, though I’m sure you can rework that easy enough if you design something better.”

Tony looked up at Cooper, astonishment clear on his face. “Gorgeous…”

“I can’t protect you like the suit can,” Cooper told him. “And with the way things are right now, I’m not likely to be anywhere close enough to try if something goes down. But I figured… well, maybe you wouldn’t mind something having a double meaning. You could wear one all the time… show you belong to someone… and slip the other on to call the suit if there’s trouble.”

It drew a smile to Tony’s face, and he leaned across to kiss Cooper as he slid the bracelet onto his left wrist, heart pointing towards his own: the traditional position to indicate he belonged to someone. “You’re too clever to keep working for the Bureau, gorgeous. You should retire and come work for someone who’ll appreciate your talents.”

Cooper gave a lopsided grin but didn’t comment, electing to work the ribbons off his present instead. It was getting to be an old argument between them, and one Cooper wasn’t ready to consider giving in on yet.

A bout of nervousness Tony couldn’t help swept through as Cooper removed the lid from the box, causing his teeth to catch his lower lip. Cooper’s own eyes went gloriously wide, his mouth dropping open as he parted the paper and found the Aran sweater nestled inside it, a business card from the seller in Antrim, Ireland carefully pinned inside the collar.

“They supposedly have meanings,” were the first words that broke past Tony’s lips in the silence that followed, Cooper’s own fingers as careful as Tony’s had been as they traced the ridges of the pattern. “The stitches, I mean, and the way they’re used in the pattern. All about luck and hard work and protection. But mostly, I just figured you could use one: you run after people in place where it’s frigid as often as you do where it’s sweltering, and you’ve got that cottage up in the middle of Iceberg, Michigan where you like to spend Halloween and Thanksgiving-”

His anxiety-driven diatribe was cut off by a kiss. The sweater was caught between them as Cooper lunged forward and caught Tony’s mouth, the ferocity of the embrace managing to silence every thought Tony had beyond those beautifully callused hands and the feel of those slightly-chapped lips moving against his own.

By the time the kiss ended, Tony was on his back, one leg half-wrapped around Cooper’s waist and one dangling off the edge of the couch. His hands were tangled in Cooper’s short red hair, and there were tears in his lover’s eyes that Tony didn’t understand. “Gorgeous?”

“It’s perfect,” Cooper managed, a hint of a brogue betraying the depth of his emotions. “Ye can’t know…”

There was something just beyond his fingertips: something Cooper hadn’t let him near yet. Something that maybe, if he pressed, Cooper would finally tell him.

But tonight was Valentine’s Day, and Tony didn’t want Cooper to feel beholden to open old scars tonight. Whatever ghosts he’d raised with the gift of the sweater, they could be laid back to rest tomorrow. “I want to,” he answered gently. “If you want to tell me.”

Cooper let out a laugh: a somewhat wetter sound than the one Tony loved to hear. “Not tonight,” Cooper told him, though whether the hesitation was his own or a result of having heard Tony’s was impossible to tell. “I think you promised me some classic movies that, as I recall, you told me were required viewing for a 21st century adult and that I couldn’t put off seeing them even one more night.”

Tony grinned up at him. He could feel the tug of the mystery on his mind; the data that would help him put together more of the pieces that made up this beautiful man in his arms. But tragic backstories, whether his or Cooper’s, would always be there to haunt them. Making new, more pleasant memories was infinitely preferable. “Soon as you get the Jiffy-Pop made,” he agreed.

Cooper laughed and shifted, standing up out of Tony’s embrace and reaching down to help him sit up as well. “Point me to the iron and I’ll get right on that.”


End file.
